Burning eyes

Anyone know anything about sudden burning in eyes, like oil has been poured into them?

This started in December after I moved back into my uni accommodation after being home for Christmas. At first I thought it was an air quality thing as I had started roasting potatoes and cooking with oil for the first time and my uni flat has poor ventilation. But this persisted and happens at least twice a week if not more even after I've moved out.

Triggers vary, sometimes I rub my eye and that triggers it even if my hand is clean, sometimes I start watering (I get very emotional for certain musical theatre songs and will start crying/eyes watering and that will trigger it. A lot of the time it just happens out of no where and I sometimes can't even open my eyes without searing pain until I've wiped them with a clean wet tissue. This happened on a film shoot and I had to walk basically blind to the base house to rinse out because it hit at a bad time. It also sometimes hits while driving but it can happen anywhere really.

The curious thing is that I'm not reacting to actual oil. I work at mcdonalds and occassionally get oil in my eye by accident and it hurts sure but goes away quickly. It doesn't instantly disable me like this does and the only time I've ever reacted at work was today in the crew room on my break.

I asked my GP and they told me to go to specsavers alongside another issue of twitching caused by focusing on embrodiery too long. They told me to take sight breaks which I do but that I had better than 20/20 vision (I didn't even know that was a thing) and they detected nothing on my scans so I don't know what could be causing this. I'm planning on going back but if anyone has advice that would be greatly appreciated because its very painful and usually flaires up when I'm not near a sink. Could it be an allergy or hay-fever? I don't experience any other symptoms of hay fever although my sister has it.